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I am a fortunate community manager because I get to both write
social media strategies and carry them through. This
seamless process allows me to have a firm grip on the day-to-day
online activities of our clients with the foresight to
effectively steer these activities to reach long-term goals.

While it is beneficial to have a team of professionals that
handle the areas of social media in which they are specialized,
there are some major obstacles to this approach, especially for
new ventures that do not have bottomless budgets to devote to the
cause. For social media to be planned and carried out in house
requires a dramatic reorganization of the departments that would
handle the accounts (usually a battle between marketing and
sales) as well as a huge commitment of time and resources.
Alternatively, if you wish to outsource social media to a large
agency, you run the risk of paying a small fortune for senior
professionals to handle your accounts, while, unbeknownst to you,
the bulk of the tasks are handed down to the juniors.

The harmonious balance, in our case, is a consolidation of the
responsibilities of a social media strategist and community
manager under one job title. This is an affordable and effective
solution for startups and small businesses that want to commit
professionally to social media without draining their marketing
budgets dry. In my position, I am able to have both macro- and
micro-level views of a client’s social media plan, enabling me to
do both jobs effectively and efficiently. Our responsibility to a
client is largely dependent on its internal resources for social
media. If a client can take on social media internally, we would
develop a strategy and provide ongoing assistance to ensure it is
followed effectively. The role of community manager could also be
shared between client and agency.

To properly develop a strategy requires an intimate understanding
of the client, its social media objectives, budget for reaching
these goals and the specific processes that will be carried out
to reach them. Having this intimate knowledge of a client’s
strategy allows me to steer online management, monitoring and
measurement activities to reach their goals. Also, being able to
see a social media account from every vantage point allows me to
provide a wealth of personalized knowledge resulting from the
experience of managing an entire account from its inception,
which could be shared with the client to provide insight into
what they are doing well and what needs improvement in daily
activities and long-term strategy. As I said in an earlier
post, it should be no mystery how an
agency carries out its clients' social media work.

I’d be happy to debate with you on this subject, as I understand
it is highly contested. Feel free to offer your comments in the
box just a little south of here.

Forrester’s POST
methodology is quite helpful in the beginning stage of
writing a strategy. Each strategy I write is tailored to the
specific needs of the client and so can’t be listed in full here.
However, I have built on each section of this methodology to
include some key points that should be included in any strategy:

People

Who are you? This report should include an analysis of
what it is you could offer your community and why they would be
interested.

Who is your audience? It should also include whom your
target community is, where they reside online, how they interact
with others and what they care about.

Who is your competition? A competitive analysis must
also be included covering your competitors and what they are
doing with social media.

Objectives

This is where you set out your goals determined by answering
the preliminary questions. You could also determine your goals by
looking at the successes of your competition and others in social
media as well as reports and other key benchmarking data.
Organizations such as Marketing Sherpa, Marketing Profs and Forrester are great for providing this kind
of information.

Strategies

How do you plan to engage an audience? This section should
include your content strategy, which should lie out your
editorial plan for at least the next few months. Who will be in
charge of developing this content, sharing it and responding to
engagement? How often will content be developed and shared? How
often will channels be monitored and updated? What kind of
training is required for these people to know how to use new
tools effectively? Where will
the information for the content come from?

It should also include your strategy for measuring success.
What will you monitor? How will you monitor? What are your key
performance metrics? What are your benchmarks? In detail, how
will you collect and analyze the data?

Technologies

Channels: A detailed account of what each channel will
offer, the short term and long-term benefits of using these
channels and the effectiveness of each channel.

Monitoring and management tools: Assess the tools
available and determine which ones work best for you.

Carrying it through: What you need to consider

Determining who will carry the strategy through requires a
thorough analysis of your internal resources, budget and the
qualifications of the agencies you could pursue. Developing a
detailed strategy will help you determine the level of commitment
you could award social media internally. In your strategy, you
must assess your budget for each of your activities. How much
will monitoring, management and analytics cost over the long run?
How much will it cost to employ social media tools? Will I have
to hire new employees to manage these accounts? How much time and
resources will I have to dedicate to educating my team on new
tools and techniques? How much would an agency cost? What can
they take on and what kind of a commitment do they require we
take on? All these questions are vital to determining if you can
carry out social media yourself, or if you need to hire outside
assistance. Your strategy should be a paint by numbers for
carrying it through. It if isn't, you have not included enough
detail.

This post covers the bare bones of strategy development and
execution, so if you have any additional questions please don’t
hesitate to ask using the comment section below, or by contacting
us directly